The challenges ahead

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September 2009 | Volume 67 | Number 1
Teaching for the 21st Century    Pages 16-21
21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead
Andrew J. Rotherham and Daniel Willingham
To work, the 21st century skills movement will require
keen attention to curriculum, teacher quality, and
assessment.
A growing number of business leaders, politicians, and
educators are united around the idea that students need "21st century skills" to
be successful today. It's exciting to believe that we live in times that are so
revolutionary that they demand new and different abilities. But in fact, the skills
students need in the 21st century are not new.
Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of
human progress throughout history, from the development of early tools, to
agricultural advancements, to the invention of vaccines, to land and sea
exploration. Such skills as information literacy and global awareness are not
new, at least not among the elites in different societies. The need for mastery
of different kinds of knowledge, ranging from facts to complex analysis? Not
new either. In
The Republic, Plato wrote about four distinct levels of intellect.
Perhaps at the time, these were considered "3rd century BCE skills"?
What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the
world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills.
Many U.S. students are taught these skills—those who are fortunate enough to
attend highly effective schools or at least encounter great teachers—but it's a
matter of chance rather than the deliberate design of our school system. Today
we cannot afford a system in which receiving a high-quality education is akin to
a game of bingo. If we are to have a more equitable and effective public
education system, skills that have been the province of the few must become
universal.
This distinction between "skills that are novel" and "skills that must be taught
more intentionally and effectively" ought to lead policymakers to different
education reforms than those they are now considering. If these skills were
indeed new, then perhaps we would need a radical overhaul of how we think
about content and curriculum. But if the issue is, instead, that schools must be
more deliberate about teaching critical thinking, collaboration, and problem
solving to all students, then the remedies are more obvious, although still
intensely challenging.
What Will It Take?
The history of U.S. education reform should greatly concern everyone who
wants schools to do a better job of teaching students to think. Many reform
efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved
into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st
century skills movement faces the same risk.
To complicate the challenge, some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding
this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created,

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content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much
more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know
about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills
movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-
income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a
matter of social equity.
The debate is not about content versus skills. There is no responsible
constituency arguing against ensuring that students learn how to think in
school. Rather, the issue is how to meet the challenges of delivering content
and skills in a rich way that genuinely improves outcomes for students.
What will it take to ensure that the idea of "21st century skills"—or more
precisely, the effort to ensure that all students, rather than just a privileged
few, have access to a rich education that intentionally helps them learn these
skills—is successful in improving schools? That effort requires three primary
components. First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the
instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an
ephemeral pursuit of skills. Second, states, school districts, and schools need to
revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how
teachers are trained. Finally, we need new assessments that can accurately
measure richer learning and more complex tasks.
For the 21st century skills effort to be effective, these three elements must be
implemented in concert. Otherwise, the reform will be superficial and counter-
productive.
Better Curriculum
People on all sides of this debate often speak of skills and knowledge as
separate. They describe skills as akin to a function on a calculator: If your
calculator can compute square roots, it can do so for any number; similarly, if a
student has developed the ability to "think scientifically," he or she can do so
with any content. In this formulation, domain knowledge is mainly important as
grist for the mill—you need something to think
about.
Skills and knowledge are not separate, however, but intertwined. In some
cases, knowledge helps us recognize the underlying structure of a problem. For
example, even young children understand the logical implications of a rule like
"If you finish your vegetables, you will get a cookie after dinner." They can
draw the logical conclusion that a child who is denied a cookie after dinner
must not have finished her vegetables. Without this familiar context, however,
the same child will probably find it difficult to understand the logical form
modus tollens, of which the cookie rule is an example. (If P, then Q. Q is false.
Therefore, P is false
.) Thus, it's inaccurate to conceive of logical thinking as a
separate skill that can be applied across a variety of situations. Sometimes we
fail to recognize that we have a particular thinking skill (such as applying
modus tollens) unless it comes in the form of known content.
At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain
knowledge is necessary if we are to use it. For example, a student might have
learned that "thinking scientifically" requires understanding the importance of
anomalous results in an experiment. If you're surprised by the results of an
experiment, that suggests that your hypothesis was wrong and the data are
telling you something interesting. But to be surprised, you must make a
prediction in the first place—and you can only generate a prediction if you
understand the domain in which you are working. Thus, without content

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knowledge we often cannot use thinking skills properly and effectively.
Why would misunderstanding the relationship of skills and knowledge lead to
trouble? If you believe that skills and knowledge are separate, you are likely to
draw two incorrect conclusions. First, because content is readily available in
many locations but thinking skills reside in the learner's brain, it would seem
clear that if we must choose between them, skills are essential, whereas
content is merely desirable. Second, if skills are independent of content, we
could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of
any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about
science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content
that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that
content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to
mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need
the knowledge that is central to the domain.
The importance of content in the development of thinking creates several
challenges for the 21st century skills movement. The first is the temptation to
emphasize advanced, conceptual thinking too early in training—an approach
that has proven ineffective in numerous past reforms, such as the "New Math"
of the 1960s (Loveless, 2002). Learning tends to follow a predictable path.
When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their
understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied
examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and
they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-
direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to
teach long division. The plan of 21st century skills proponents seems to be to
give students more experiences that will presumably develop these skills—for
example, having them work in groups. But experience is not the same thing as
practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you
try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies
to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled
than you are.
Because of these challenges, devising a 21st century skills curriculum requires
more than paying lip service to content knowledge. Outlining the skills in detail
and merely urging that content be taught, too, is a recipe for failure. We must
plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat
both as equally important.
In addition, education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable.
If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we
should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively
rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students
learning them.
Better Teaching
Greater emphasis on skills also has important implications for teacher training.
Our resolve to teach these skills to all students will not be enough. We must
have a plan by which teachers can succeed where previous generations have
failed.
Advocates of 21st century skills favor student-centered methods—for example,
problem-based learning and project-based learning—that allow students to

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collaborate, work on authentic problems, and engage with the community.
These approaches are widely acclaimed and can be found in any pedagogical
methods textbook; teachers know about them and believe they're effective. And
yet, teachers don't use them. Recent data show that most instructional time is
composed of seatwork and whole-class instruction led by the teacher (National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research
Network, 2005). Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change
their teaching strategies or use these student-centered methods (Shapson,
Wright, Eason, & Fitzgerald, 1980). Again, these are not new issues. John
Goodlad (1984) reported the same finding in his landmark study published more
than 20 years ago.
Why don't teachers use the methods that they believe are most effective? Even
advocates of student-centered methods acknowledge that these methods pose
classroom management problems for teachers. When students collaborate, one
expects a certain amount of hubbub in the room, which could devolve into
chaos in less-than-expert hands. These methods also demand that teachers be
knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-
moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses. Anyone who has watched a
highly effective teacher lead a class by simultaneously engaging with content,
classroom management, and the ongoing monitoring of student progress knows
how intense and demanding this work is. It's a constant juggling act that
involves keeping many balls in the air.
Part of the 21st century skills movement's plan is the call for greater
collaboration among teachers. Indeed, this is one of the plan's greatest
strengths; we waste a valuable resource when we don't give teachers time to
share their expertise. But where will schools find the release time for such
collaboration? Will they hire more teachers or increase class size? How will they
provide the technology infrastructure that will enable teachers to collaborate
with more than just the teacher down the hall? Who will build and maintain and
edit the Web sites, wikis, and so forth? These challenges raise thorny questions
about whether the design of today's schools is compatible with the goals of the
21st century skills movement.
For change to move beyond administrators' offices and penetrate classrooms,
we must understand that professional development is a massive undertaking.
Most teachers don't need to be persuaded that project-based learning is a good
idea—they already believe that. What teachers need is much more robust
training and support than they receive today, including specific lesson plans that
deal with the high cognitive demands and potential classroom management
problems of using student-centered methods.
Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to
do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and
accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods,
underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the
lack of capacity in the field today.
Instead, staff development planners would do well to engage the best teachers
available in an iterative process of planning, execution, feedback, and continued
planning. This process, along with additional teacher training, will require
significant time. And of course none of this will be successful without broader
reforms in how teachers are recruited, selected, and deselected in an effort to
address the whole picture of education's human capital challenge.
Better Tests

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There is little point in investing heavily in curriculum and human capital without
also investing in assessments to evaluate what is or is not being accomplished
in the classroom. Fortunately, as Elena Silva (2008) noted in a recent report for
Education Sector, the potential exists today to produce assessments that
measure thinking skills and are also reliable and comparable between students
and schools—elements integral to efforts to ensure accountability and equity.
But efforts to assess these skills are still in their infancy; education faces
enormous challenges in developing the ability to deliver these assessments at
scale.
The first challenge is the cost. Although higher-level skills like critical thinking
and analysis can be assessed with well-designed multiple-choice tests, a truly
rich assessment system would go beyond multiple-choice testing and include
measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at
answers, and even allow for collaboration. Such measures, however, cost more
money than policymakers have traditionally been willing to commit to
assessment. And, at a time when complaining about testing is a national
pastime and cynicism about assessment, albeit often uninformed, is on the rise,
getting policymakers to commit substantially more resources to it is a difficult
political challenge.
Producing enough high-quality assessments to meet the needs of a system as
large and diverse as U.S. public schools would stretch the capacity of the
assessment industry, and incentives do not exist today for many new entrants
to become major players in that field. We would need a coordinated public,
private, and philanthropic strategy—including an intensive research and
development effort—to foster genuine change.
Substantial delivery challenges also remain. Delivering these assessments in a
few settings, as is the case today, is hardly the same as delivering them at
scale across a state—especially the larger states. Because most of these
assessments will be technology-based, most schools' information technology
systems will require a substantial upgrade.
None of these assessment challenges are insurmountable, but addressing them
will require deliberate attention from policymakers and 21st century skills
proponents, as well as a deviation from the path that policymaking is on today.
Such an effort is essential. Why mount a national effort to change education if
you have no way of knowing whether the change has been effective?
A Better, But Harder, Way
The point of our argument is not to say that teaching students how to think,
work together better, or use new information more rigorously is not a worthy
and attainable goal. Rather, we seek to call attention to the magnitude of the
challenge and to sound a note of caution amidst the sirens calling our political
leaders once again to the rocky shoals of past education reform failures.
Without better curriculum, better teaching, and better tests, the emphasis on
"21st century skills" will be a superficial one that will sacrifice long-term gains
for the appearance of short-term progress.
Curriculum, teacher expertise, and assessment have all been weak links in past
education reform efforts—a fact that should sober today's skills proponents as
they survey the task of dramatically improving all three. Efforts to create more
formalized common standards would help address some of the challenges by
focusing efforts in a common direction. But common standards will not, by

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themselves, be enough.
The past few decades have seen great progress in education reform in the
United States—progress that has especially benefited less-advantaged students.
Today's reformers can build on that progress only if they pay keen attention to
the challenges associated with genuinely improving teaching and learning. If we
ignore these challenges, the 21st century skills movement risks becoming
another fad that ultimately changes little—or even worse, sets back the cause
of creating dramatically more powerful schools for U.S. students, especially
those who are underserved today.
References
Goodlad, J. I. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Loveless, T. (2002). A tale of two math reforms: The politics of the new math
and NCTM standards. In T. Loveless (Ed.),
The great curriculum debate (pp.
184–209). Washington, DC: Brookings.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care
Research Network. (2005). A day in the third grade: A large-scale study of
classroom quality and teacher and student behavior.
Elementary School Journal,
105
, 305–323.
Shapson, S. M., Wright, E. N., Eason, G., & Fitzgerald, J. (1980). An
experimental study of the effects of class size.
American Educational Research
Journal, 17
, 141–152.
Silva, E. (2008).
Measuring skills for the 21st century. Washington, DC:
Education Sector. Available:
www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/MeasuringSkills.pdf
Andrew J. Rotherham is Cofounder and Publisher of Education Sector and
writes the blog Eduwonk.com; [email protected]. Daniel
Willingham is Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and the
author of
Why Don't Students Like School? (Jossey-Bass, 2009);
[email protected].